


Recruits

by etothey



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/etothey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel rounds up--allies isn't the word.  AU rider on S5's "Power Play" with divergences starting at "Why We Fight."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recruits

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Oyce and Minnow for the beta.

He had a list. 

Number seventeen stood beside him. Dressed down, but never at ease. Career navy, one might say. 

Number sixteen lived crippled and surrounded by her own devoted progeny. He told himself he hadn't left her alone out of any sense of mercy. 

Numbers fourteen and fifteen had thought themselves free of him. Five hours locked in a cellar with him and they drank his holy water so he couldn't make them talk anymore. He liked them better silent, anyway. 

Number thirteen he had first met in a bar, on a slow night. Given how easily he had dusted her during the sun's vacation, he decided it must have been a very slow night. 

Number twelve fought when he came for her, then laid her head in his lap. She had always been his favorite failure. He had touched her the way her brother wasn't supposed to. But she killed quickly, without waste or the artistry of pain. He approved of her now. 

Number eleven found a creative way to dust himself. He would have been no use anyway. 

Number ten had to be taken to the safe house in chains, under threat of sunlight. It had been an interesting drive. 

The same for numbers seven through nine. He found himself pleased that this many had survived the century, the centuries. Good judgment, if good was the word. 

He had sung a lullaby to number six while the light went out of her eyes. He wondered if her father had done the same. He imagined so. He wondered if his own son had ever heard that song. 

A Slayer had taken out number five. It figured. 

He still had the memory of a scar, if not the scar itself, where number four had been staked through both their torsos, and nearly his own heart. Number four had turned out a failure, too. 

He hadn't even had to bring out the chainsaw for number three, who didn't care what the target was, and came with a minimum of beating. Now he'd never find out if number three was any good at one-armed combat. 

He had saved number two for last. Already he felt the hunger, like a sickness. Spike wouldn't like it, which was why Spike didn't know. 

If he had to bring his friends down with him, goddamn right he was going to bring his other belongings. He estimated he could break them again in weeks; once accomplished, even after decades, all he had to do was ride the fractures. 

Lawson offered him a cigarette. He took it. It was that kind of night, that kind of year, that kind of apocalypse. 


End file.
